They will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit.
We have moved the animals on. After about 10 days at the east end of the north pasture, we have shifted them to the north side. This is the worst and least productive part of the pasture. We have decided to mob graze it this fall/winter. That is, instead of moving the animals through fast… Continue reading Pasture Rehab (with a digression about Curly Dock).
Tuesday after school we set out for the pasture to mark out the lines where the new fence is going to run. The first step was removing the netting that has been up since early this summer. These longer sections of netting are extremely heavy and awkward to move. I will be so happy when… Continue reading Subdividing the South Pasture: Marking out the lines
Monday was one of those days. We hustled hard first thing to get to the farm early, because it is Michaelmas and we wanted to get Iris back out on pasture. Why on Michaelmas? Because it's fun to say, and because it's memorable. It's a fixed feast at the end of September that I can… Continue reading Not much gets done some days.
We are deep into the dry season. The rainstorm at the beginning of August was nice, but it didn't last long. The pasture is dry and grasses are not growing fast enough. We are still moving the sheep through the pasture, but with very large paddocks, only for one day. We are also feeding hay… Continue reading Pasture Plans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLo_XQJeF5k Some observations: The difference a few days and one good rain storm can make is astonishing in pasture recovery. I need to learn how to identify pasture grass species. The farm is quite pretty of a summer morning.
Tuesday was the day we got around to harvesting our wheat. It was a bit disappointing. If you look closely at the picture above you will see that a significant number of the wheat stalks are missing their seed head. In this section it was 50% or more, most other sections were not hit quite… Continue reading Harvesting Wheat and Garlic
As we mentioned a few weeks ago, Edmund contracted to dig the hole for the first fence post for the south pasture. Schedules have been hectic, so we were not able to get together to put the post in, and also, we didn't have the 16 foot gate to measure the post location with. We… Continue reading Subdividing the South Pasture: Setting the First Post
It has been a while since we posted anything here. We've been busy, camping, and going to Swiss wrestling festivals, and of course working on the farm here and there. Now, since Daddy has to go to do that National Guard thing again, we are going to try to write all the blog posts, so… Continue reading Subdividing the North Pasture: Hanging the Gates.
We are getting into the final stretch (get it?) of our North Pasture fencing project. Our friend Vincent came over to help us stretch it. He has never done any fencing before, but that did not prevent him from learning quickly and being a great help. We anchored section one at the west end and… Continue reading Subdividing the North Pasture: Stretching the Fence.
Little Farm in the Big City 